The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

«‹›21 »

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Not all tastes are created equal. Some books are actually better than others, independent of individual taste (though not independent of critical discourse).

One of the reasons this thread has always worked pretty well is that people are willing to speak up when books are bad as well as when they're good. These opinions can be engaged with and the substantive ones sorted to the top.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jun 28, 2013

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 00:56

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 09:02

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

KingAsmo posted:

Hey guys I've been on a two year long sci-fi binge and I'm running out of ideas for what to read next, was hoping you had some suggestions for me.

I would really like something with cyberpunk elements but also with strong prose and that has been written recently enough to extrapolate contemporary technology in to the future. I'm cool with anything from contemporary to the distant future as far as setting goes. Needs to be available in audiobook.

I think what I am looking for is something covering similar subject matter to Altered Carbon if that makes sense. I really like stuff with biotech implants, computer viruses, hacking, designer drugs, virtual reality, etc.

As far as the writing style, I really liked Dune, Hyperion and Neuromancer.

I am also really in to Neil Stephenson for his immense research and detail and whatever I read next I would like for it to be long as I primarily listen to Audiobooks at work and I want something that will last a few days at least.

I like Vernor Vinge but I found Rainbows End to be a little too... silly? Liked the tech but looking for something darker. Gibson is great but I thought Pattern Recognition was a little dull and low on technology futurism stuff. I intend to read Broken Angels (Kovachs 2) but I'd like to try a different author first since I just finished Altered Carbon.

Read something written by a woman. Try Cherryh for space opera. God's War by Kameron Hurley is a lot like Altered Carbon in its tone and delivery, though I think it's a pretty flawed book. I dunno there are probably a lot of recommendations I'm missing. There's Connie Willis but I don't think she'd be to your taste.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2013 02:25

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The Endymion books commit the cardinal sin of actively making their predecessors less good.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 01:48

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

It's not as good as Altered Carbon, no. The books are fairly episodic and self-contained; there's no real through plot.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 17:23

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I will never tire of posting this

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 08:38

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

specklebang posted:

I think this might be interesting to you: http://www.amazon.com/From-Hell-ebook/dp/B0055SXWLG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373301361&sr=1-1&keywords=from+hell+ian

Someone tell me if there's a quick way to tell whether a book is self-published or not.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 17:40

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

specklebang posted:

If there is a publisher, the first few pages will identify it. For example, the book I suggested, From Hell, is self-published. The quality of a book has little to do with ow it is published in these modern times.

Yes it does. Self-published books are overwhelmingly drek. You can feel free to cite counterexamples, but odds are that they, too, will be drek.

Most published science fiction and fantasy, including many popular series, is also poo poo, but the odds are at least a little better you'll find something worth reading.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Oh, what the hell, can we say Wheel of Time for female characters in? I feel like that's too much book to recommend to a new reader to the genre.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 8, 2013

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 22:34

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

There's too much genuinely good writing out there (much of it, alas, not SF/F) to waste time on self-published work. Bear in mind that books like The Dresden Files are often also 'suggested'.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 03:51

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The problem with self-published work isn't that it's self-published, it's that it's bad. This generally goes even for the works that are held up as exceptions. Thus the Dresden Files metaphor: even when a lot of people say something is good, it's often still embarrassingly awful.

I agree, though, that this is probably not a super productive conversation for the thread. My opinions about the quality and worth of SF/F writing are probably more astringent than most.

In a way it reminds me of a discussion that comes up a lot in the TD board games thread - whether works should be evaluated merely by their hedonic value ('it was fun!') or by some less subjective critical theory. I'm pretty strongly in favor of the latter; I think that fiction succeeds or fails on terms beyond 'I liked it :shobon:

', and that not all recommendations can be equally substantiated. But that's a topic for another place.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jul 9, 2013

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 04:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You aren't wrong about any of that, but I just don't think there's much value to found in a purely subjective hugbox discussion. 'I liked it. Sorry to hear you didn't! Have you tried X? May I recommend Y?' makes for a much less interesting forums thread than real critical engagement. Which, I know, I should try to present an exemplar of; I've just finished Connie Willis' alternately frustrating and brilliant Blackout/All Clear and want to do a post about it.

On an unrelated note, barring perhaps the shared theme of SF/F being a cesspool, I don't know if anyone here pays attention to or cares about the tiny incestuous horrible world of SFFWA politics, but it's been pretty hilarious of late.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 05:15

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Uh, long story short, but there's a magazine for SFFWA members called the Bulletin. One of the recent issues carried a fantasy-cheesecake bikini barbarian cover, and this led to some discussion of sexism in the Bulletin (reasonably, since sexism is a fairly entrenched force in the SF/F community as a whole).

Interlude here for a classic internet denizen response:

quote:

I think this is all blown out of proportion. Too many people are too sensitive to things that aren�t really an issue. Maybe they are bothered because the image turns them on, and that makes them uncomfortable?

As a follow-up, a later issue of the Bulletin contained a column by Resnick and Malzberg, two old-school male writers, discussing the reaction. They, uh...really went off about it! People objecting to the cover were accused of censorship, neo-fascism, and thought control.

quote:

Take a look at the cover to a recent edition of The SWFA Bulletin, issue number 200. There�s a warrior woman on it. Not a hell of a lot different from a few hundred warrior women who have graced the covers of our field�s books and magazines ever since C. L. Moore (a woman) created Jirel of Joiry. I think the warrior woman is wearing boots, but [though] it�s pretty dark and shaded in that area, I know she's displaying less flesh than just about any bikini you can see on a beach in the country today.

Pretty standard kerfuffle about objectification so far, with the standard counterarguments that oh, who gets up in arms about all the half-naked male barbarians, have you looked at a romance cover/listened to a rap song lately, so on.

I'm not sure exactly how this came in, but it turned out that Resnick and Malzberg had a ~~slightly~~ creepy history of writing columns about prominent women writers and editors in the field and commenting on their looks. They didn't see much of a problem with this (bear in mind, they're writing in the official bulletin of a professional organization) and it led to an escalating eruption within SFWA, including some resignations and the president, John Scalzi, promising action.

Anyway, the good stuff: at some point someone begins leaking private posts from a board where a number of older SFWA members maintain a community, including Jerry Pournelle. This was an absolute gold mine. It included some discussion of past SFWA drama (including the incident where Harlan Ellison groped SFWA Grand Master Connie Willis on stage at an awards banquet), this gem about the good old days of women at conventions:

quote:

And at least one bit of boorishness became almost a conventional practice at conventions a sort of standing bad joke.

I refer to Randall Garrett�s practice of getting stinking drunk and going to parties where he would look for young women he had never met before. approach them standing well away from them, no contact, bowing. and saying �Hi I�m Randall Garrett Let�s gently caress" The result was usually laughter. although it got his face slapped a couple of times, and attention from husbands/boyfriends/paladins more than once But everyone knew he did that. and his defense was that he was making a polite offer to someone of the proper age. and always respected their answers � and it saved a lot of time for both parties Incorrigible Not really barbaric because he was in fact very polite and even respectful He seldom did this sort of thing at big open parties. or publisher promotion events. confining himself in general to less open parties attended mostly by invitees In any event this became a well known story

And, best of all, this possibly-even-serious suggestion that the best thing to do to prevent SFWA from being taken over by feminists would be to arrange a plot to elect Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, an anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-feminist biotruths dude, to the SFWA presidency, since he could be easily controlled and removed. This rather than electing John Scalzi:

quote:

Subject: Das Org
From: William Barton
Date: Thu 06 Jun 2013 09:57:15a

So, last night I wandered over the other place and read around a bit. My take? The SFWA treasury has been captured by a cabal. Good luck getting it back. Remember back at the election, when I suggested it would be a bad idea to elect Mr. Scalzi�s appointed ringer? Remember when I said it might be a good idea to elect Mr. Beale, no matter how much of an rear end in a top hat he seemed to be, *just to gum up the works*? SFWA could have been recaptured from Vox Dei without much trouble. From this lot? Not so much.

quote:

I�ll rememind all you geniuses of some things I said during the election, so when the time comes to cull SFWA of Evil, you won�t have trouble deciding where to send me:

1. I have no opinion of Theodore Beale as an SF/ F writer because I�ve read none of his SF/ F writing. I have said the same thing about Raymond Feist, for example.

2. My opinion of Beale the Presumptive Hominid, as represent by his on-line rantings, is best encapsulate by the phrase: Azoy fil ritzinoyl zol er oystrinkin. That goes for a not insubstantial percentage of the other denizens of SFdom as well.

3. My opinion of Beale the Candidate was simple enough. SFWA is being taken over by a cabal of sorts which, if it does take over, will the possess SFWA�s treasury. Once they own SFWA, we�ll never get it back. Electing Beale presidenyt would have stall the process, and Beale we could easily enough overthrow! Most of you geniuses didn�t listen (or didn�t undertand what I was talking about).

4. Judging by the postings of some illustious award-winning authors (as well as some puffed-up pretenders) here, it�s apparent there�s no connection between intelligence and talent. I�m aware that might apply to me as well, but I�m on the inside looking out, so I can�t tell.

Think long and carefully about this nonsense, comrades. Because right now you�re selling the rope to the hangman.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 07:23

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Holy gently caress

Srice posted:

Yikes. Talk about a stellar case study of that geek social fallacy thing.

So go ahead and shatter my faith in humanity a little more: have there been any attempts to boot him out of the SFFWA or is it the sort of organization where as long as you meet the basic requirements they don't care about anything else?

There has been such discussion! A running thread in these leaked posts included an argument about whether to kick Beale out, the opposition mainly being on the grounds that nobody should ever be kicked out for their political beliefs.

ed balls balls man posted:

I've found the best female characters are probably in the Malazan books. Off the top of my head I can think of Laseen, Shurq Elalle, Yan Tovis, Tavore Paran, Uru Hela/Mayfly (my favorite heavies.), a bunch of the Tiste Andii, Blend and Picker, Adjunct Lorn etc. It's a bit of an investment to read though.

Loving Life Partner posted:

Beaten, yup.

Malazan is very pro women characters. The division of main/named characters approaches an equitable 50 percent even. Women do everything men do, nobody really even makes a stink about it, and there's about a dozen female characters that have long arcs of growth, change, and impact on the world, with a few being main lynchpins in the whole narrative arc.

I don't casually recommend Malazan ever though, huge time commitment, I still think it's the high water mark though.

I appreciate Erikson a fair bit, and he is a really nice guy with great intentions, but while he's a generally competent and often inspired writer of women, he's nowhere near the best. A lot of the examples you cited would be cases I'd point at to explain how well-intentioned dude writers still stumble in one way or another.

But there are definitely a lot of things Erikson gets right that most get really wrong. He told me a lot about his worldbuilding, which included a very ground-up rethinking of gender relations based on the efficacy of magic for reproductive health and control - more thought than most fantasy writers put into it!

Tavore owns too. Malazan may have the best women characters out of the cadre of modern epic fantasy tomes written by dudes, at least.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 16:51

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I think that's a pretty cool goal to shoot for.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 17:15

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Connie Willis' entire method of dramatic tension hinges on constant misunderstandings, miscommunications, interruptions, well-intending but obstructive bystanders, missed connections and other unfavorable coincidences. Blackout/All Clear does this for hundreds and hundreds of pages and becomes nearly unbearable in its elliptical introspective passivity...and then somehow manages to make a fair stab at justifying and using all that in the end.

I don't think it's quite the book Doomsday Book is but after seeming frustrating for so long it's really remarkable what it manages...if the end works for you. There's no future story at all, either, so no major technology problems.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 02:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

In the context of the book, you're just not supposed to worry too much about it, I think. But yeah, all the human worlds (including Earth) were colonized by the Hainish a long long time ago, and then their interstellar capabilities collapsed and they're only now recontacting and rebuilding. I'm not spoilering this because I don't think it's ever treated as a big deal.

I think it's pretty cool that she did the no FTL setting long before it came into vogue.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 12:01

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I don't think there's anything wrong with LeGuin - she's an amazing writer and Dispossessed is a great book. But if you disagree with its very explicit, very didactic politics, it's probably going to be an obnoxious read; it will seem naive and superficial, because it comes from a very different worldview.

LeGuin is a central figure in the genre and everyone should read her, and she's a personal favorite of mine. But she's certainly trying to draw a political reaction in that novel.

Hieronymous Alloy you got dreadful advice about Earthsea (probably from someone who got Mad At Tehanu). Read the next two books - they represent LeGuin's return to the setting after a long time, hoping to look at it from another angle. Tehanu is an intentionally small, difficult novel about the idea of powerless power, the value of the small and everyday in a world of epic deeds and magic and dragons. It contains a lot of LeGuin's ideas about women and gender that I don't agree with, but she writes about them capably and engagingly. The Other Wind is more of a traditional Earthsea book, with a sweeping plot, but it retains the personal and political threads from Tehanu and it's also just...really nice; all the characters are warm and approachable and it brings the whole Earthsea story to what feels like a suitable close.

You know how the violence in a movie like Children of Men feels infinitely more personal and dangerous than the violence in big loud Transformers, because it's so understated? LeGuin understands the same thing about magic.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2013 15:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

House Louse posted:

Well, you should thank General Battuta for that. I'm boggled that anyone could confuse her with paranormal romance (although Kim Harrison's a pretty cool dude, I think). You'd have to be judging them by their covers, or seriously overrating the psychic-boyfriend thing, to think that they were anything like that. Though I've only read Threshold and Low Red Moon but they struck me as books using Lovecraftian motifs in a mainstream-literary style, early Angela Carter-ish maybe.

If I did something to lump Caitlin Kiernan in with other urban fantasy I'm sorry :ohdear:

# ¿ Jul 22, 2013 03:06

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Scott Westerfeld is known primarily as a YA author, but I'm curious if anyone here has read his Risen Empire/Killing of Worlds duology. It is smart as gently caress and the prose, while unmannered and direct, is very, very smooth on the palate. The book's politics are interesting and progressive, the characters remarkably human for such a high-tech setting, he keeps everything tactile and kinetic despite the fact that the technology and action are appallingly sophisticated, and for a space opera book it's quite hard-SF in its sensibility beyond a couple soft conceits.

The big space battle that runs through the second book is an absolute masterclass in how to render a duel between combatants closing at .01c and using drone weapons tense, exciting, and human. There is also a surprisingly touching and uncreepy romance between a posthuman commando and her impromptu captive, a baseline woman with unrecognized savant talents kept down by depression that manages to make a few subtle and effective political and philosophical arguments.

This might be the best gateway New Space Opera I've ever read.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jul 24, 2013

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 01:15

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Normally I would say 'read a book by a woman' but I actually don't know of any epic fantasy series by women that I would recommend off the top of my head, although I have heard that Elizabeth Moon is good...I must be missing something obvious. Curse of Chalion? Temeraire? (I haven't actually read either of these)

e: Jesus Christ, Earthsea, which may be more influential on modern fantasy than Tolkien in some respects. Not sure you'll like it but you should read it anyway.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 04:25

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Hey andrew smash I finally got a copy of Ship of Fools.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 15:52

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Ship of Fools/Unto Leviathan was wonderfully atmospheric for a good section of its length, and good God did it have one of the best 'oh poo poo' moments I've ever read. But I don't think it really delivered on a lot of its potential. The derelict alien ship and the mystery of the hook room(s) were compelling and frightening, and in combination with the constant meditations on the nature of evil, they seemed to be pointing towards a compelling philosophical-dread climax like Blindsight's. But when the alien force involved ultimately tipped its hand, it seemed mostly ineffectual, its malevolence banal even on the physical - let alone the philosophical - level. I found the conclusion frustrating not because it was open-ended but because the clues it dropped seemed to point towards a pretty dry and familiar solution: aliens live on a big haunted ship and lure people in to mount them on meat hooks. We had so many horrible clues - the psychological effects of the ship on the explorers, the possibly self-inflicted massacre on Antioch, the priest's chilling suicide after he reported literally losing his connection to God - that the eventual reveal of some shapeshifting claw aliens felt like a sort of authorial surrender: 'I don't know what this all meant!'

The other difficulty I hit at first was Russo's very plain, direct style, but while a bit distracting in its simplicity it washed out pleasant enough by the end.

I almost wish I'd only read the first half of the book, because it built up such a wonderful atmosphere of dread. I dunno. Am I coming at it from the wrong angle? I'll give it this, it was some very effective space horror for a very long time, and that's not something we have enough of. I just felt like it was hinting at being a much better, much more frightening book than it turned out.

e: The more I think about this the more I feel like Russo must have been writing towards something else. Why else the subplot about the Church archives, which might shine light on the ship's past journeys? It never pays off, but it seems like it could've hinted at past encounters with the alien ship (that's what I expected, at least) or some other deeper, more interesting connection. Similarly, the book's opening scene shows the bishop overseeing the construction of a machine that figures into his plans, but we never find out what the machine is for.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Jul 26, 2013

# ¿ Jul 26, 2013 03:29

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

quote:

I do agree that the ending fell apart a bit, but drat it was a great journey getting there.

It really was. Right at the following passage, after they find the hook room on the ship:

(seriously don't highlight this if you are going to read the book, really don't)
Antioch. Antioch. The old woman had said she'd been rescued from Antioch.

I had to stop and yell :frogout:

# ¿ Jul 26, 2013 03:54

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Schneider Heim posted:

Has anyone read anything by Catherynne M. Valente? I'm curious because Haikasoru, an imprint of Japanese SF, released a book of her titled The Melancholy of Mechagirl.

Yes, she's one of the best prose stylists working today and an incredibly prolific, challenging, important author. That said, a lot of her work requires real effort to read because it's so loving lush and dense.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 02:00

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Darth Walrus posted:

I dunno, I felt it went down quite smoothly, in a modern-fairytale sort of way.

I think it depends on which one you're talking about. Palimpsest in particular I had to read in small sections because, as ridiculous as it sounds, the prose felt physically filling.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 15:55

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I think I'd contra-recommend that. The character development is generally puerile and the direction the series takes with respect to Rama and its ultimate origin and purpose feels vastly unlike anything Clarke would have written. The Rama PC game based on Rama II was pretty awesome, though!

e: but, really no harm giving Rama II a shot I guess

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 15:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Zachack posted:

If you want a sequel to Rendezvous then you want this:

http://www.amazon.com/RAMA-DOS/dp/B0007OMLV0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375159821&sr=8-1&keywords=rama+game

Clarke's in it, along with some of the stuff introduced in later books. It also has math. I don't know how it ends, though, because when I was in high school I got to the color-based Base8 math section and blacked out.

It gets pretty insane towards the end. My dad would play it when I was a kid, and my brother and I would run around screaming and offering suggestions for the puzzles. I remember a sense of near-religious awe at some of the scenes in there (but I was, like, eight).

# ¿ Jul 30, 2013 14:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Gibson got rich, I can only assume, because his latest trilogy is very much about being an artist now moving among the corporate types who were once monolithic and distant.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 02:05

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I don't think the depiction of sexuality in science fiction would even qualify as a derail for this thread - it's been one of the central questions of the genre since, what, the New Wave? Before?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 06:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Bruxism posted:

I was just coming to post this! I'm about halfway through Player of Games and I'm loving it. Surface Detail appears to be much further along in the series, but how important is it to read the culture books in order?

Almost not at all, just read Use of Weapons before Surface Detail.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 15:19

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

What you should do with it is try to sell it. The big imprints will absolutely buy that, and people will absolutely read it.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 03:31

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

tliil posted:

Part of the problem is that sci-fi tends to be written by less than social white guys. So even if they sympathize with all those things, they can't write them well. There are exceptions.

While you're right, I think it's time for us to stop talking about non-white, non-male writers as exceptions, because I'm worried it's stopped being a way to recognize marginalization and accidentally become part of that marginalization.

Writers like LeGuin and Butler are central parts of the genre. They are sci-f. I don't think we should call them exceptions.

I'll make myself one of the guilty here: I've talked about SF/F as a white male genre because that's what I read growing up. But it's become increasingly clear to me that when I say 'there are exceptions', what I mean is 'I didn't read the right people growing up'.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 18:11

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

If you're going to start Malazan start with the second book. You'll have no idea what's going on either way and it's a better book.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 16:43

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Yes, read Connie Willis!

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 23:48

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

fritz posted:

Oh in other news related to Jemisin, did y'all see that SFWA kicked out Vox Day/Theodore Beale this week?

Yes! I guess I will actually join now, even though I'm sure there's still a long way to go.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2013 02:01

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Yes. Even ran for SFFWA president against him, leading to that hilarious proposed plot to elect Beale instead of Scalzi because it would be easier to control a Christian fundamentalist than the hordes of EVIL FEMINISTS.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2013 05:23

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Nevvy Z posted:

Can anyone recommend some SF writers who also write great non-S Fiction? I'm currently listening to an audio of "Welcome to the Monkey House" by Vonnegut, and I really enjoy things like "Who are we today." I also quite like Theodore Sturgeon shorts, which range from SF to fantasy to just odd little tales about real people.

Iain M. Banks had a distinguished career as a realistic lit author under the clever code name 'Iain Banks'. Any Banks books without the M are nominally literary rather than genre.

Have you tried magical realism?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2013 17:37

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

They've been out for a while, I got to flip through one in early July. I guess this is not a very substantive post, except to suggest that Lynch has had a good while to draft!

# ¿ Aug 16, 2013 18:00

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

specklebang posted:

I wouldn't believe until I actually see it. This book has been postponed for years due to the authors mental instability. Book 1 is good as a stand-alone and is a really excellent book. Book 2 is pretty tedious.

I've read it, it's real. You can believe in it.

'Mental instability' is a pretty lovely way to describe it, and you should feel bad!

# ¿ Aug 18, 2013 00:14

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

No, I haven't read the first two :v:

# ¿ Aug 18, 2013 00:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 09:02

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I assumed (unfairly) that you spoke out of hostility, tacit or otherwise. I took issue with the language because I don't think depression or anxiety really belong under the same label - 'instability' - as problems like schizophrenia or dissociative disorders. But I leapt to conclusions, and honestly you've done more to support him and people with similar issues than I have. I apologize.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2013 01:41

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

«‹›21 »